The Watcher><The Watched

The Watcher >< The Watched – 眼 >< 见

Yang Yang 杨扬, Kaiho Yu 余佳浩, Dana Cuff

As the city becomes increasingly “intelligent,” so grows the imperative to cautiously recognize the technologies that we are relying on for our collective life. Public cameras and the data they collect, for security or traffic coordination, compose an omniscient and predictive sensor network that enables high-precision simulation and feedback control over the everyday environment while allows no return contact. Here, we inquire: What is the role of citizens in a fully tech-equipped city? Is each citizen just one indistinctive pixel on his/her commuting way that could be represented in two dimensions on a monitor? Are they merely sliding into the big data that ultimately make the decisions for themselves? Is there any last battlefield where the politics have not yet ended with the hyperreality?

This project ventures that the relationship between the watcher and the watched is not a closed one but transgressible for cultural debate as indicated by the symbol “><” borrowed from art historian Miwon Kwon to refer to the complex relationship between an artwork and its situated context. “The Watcher >< The Watched” suggests that the masses can regain their power under the gaze of the omnipresent camera by interrupting the one-way system. Our installation responds to our inquiries with a heterotopic space on the screen, the emergence and the evolution of which are triggered by the curiosity of human-camera interactions. The looking back to the impersonal gaze by the individuals—intentionally or not—would be caught by the camera and lead to a series of political alternatives on the screen, fictional but pertinent: a flash mob or a tug of war on the platform at the Futian Railway Station, and pop-up ads on the diverse socio-cultural activities in the surrounding area pushed to targeted audience. The on-screen plot will be thickening with the intensity of the gaze back—the amount and length of eye gazing, in which way to critically incorporate the audience in the practice of seeing and to give life the otherwise anonymous living.

愈发“智能化”的城市要求我们必须更审慎地辨识我们共同生活所依赖的各种技术。比如，用于公共安全或交通协调的监控摄像头通过数据采集，建构了一个无所不知的网络，并实现高精度的模拟以预判和调控日常环境；然而，这个密闭的网络并不需要任何来自被监控者的参与和想象。在此，我们追问：一个技术完备的城市中的市民角色是怎样的？每个通勤在路上的市民是否只是一粒可以在显示器上以二维方式呈现的无差别像素？他们是否最终只是被汇入各种大数据，并且这些大数据早就替他们作出了选择？每个城市个体还有没有与各种“超真实”相抗衡的可能？

我们认为“眼”与“见”之间并不只是简单的闭环关系，相反存在着逾越界限的可能性。标题“眼><见”借用艺术史学家权美媛用来表达艺术作品与其所处情境之间复杂关系的符号，意在指出，在无处不在的摄像头的注视下，都市大众仍可以通过介入这个单向系统来重获一种回望的权力。我们的装置通过一个在屏幕上虚构的异空间回应以上追问，而这个空间的发生与发展正是由人眼与摄像头互动的好奇心所触发的。当观众有意或无意地回望向没有情感的监控摄像头，他们的目光被捕捉并触发屏幕上一系列与现实相关的虚拟情境——在福田高铁站公共空间发生的快闪、拔河，以及高铁站周边各类社会文化活动的广告推送。这种回望的目光愈多，时间愈久，屏幕上的叙事情节越丰富，越能将观众带入“见”的行为与内容，并对技术网络中的无名化生活展开反思。

Credits:

Yang Yang 杨扬, Kaiho Yu 余佳浩, Dana Cuff.